Today in Washington D. C. - Feb 17, 2009

Congress is in recess. On February 24th, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has scheduled a cloture vote on a bill to grant House voting rights the delegate from the District of Colombia (S. 160). This is unconstitutional as reported previously in September 2007 but these days Democrats continue to rule by fiat and to pass bills regardless of the Constitution of the United States. Prior articles: The D.C. Voting Rights Issue is Back! and House Violates Constitution & Votes to give D.C. a seat . . . Display Ignorance of the Constitution. The Constitution says "the several states" shall send representatives to Congress - NOT District or Territories.

Today, President Obama travels to Denver to sign the stimulus bill, You may recall that Obama in Denver broke with tradition and accepted his nomination in almost cult fashion at the stadium. The news in Washington is mostly focusing on post-mortem discussion of the bill.

Politico reports on a dynamic that was mostly beneath the surface of last week’s marathon negotiations: anger from liberal House Democrats over having to compromise with the Senate in order to pass a bill. According to Politico, “House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) is pushing Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to take a harder line with the Senate after a trio of Republican senators forced Congress to trim billions from the $787 billion economic stimulus package. . . . Democrats complained repeatedly about this dynamic as negotiators finalized the stimulus package last week, stripping billions for state aid and school construction at the request of Specter, Snowe and Collins. One House Democrat, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said colleagues are ‘furious’ about those changes.”

How far out on a limb are House Democrats if they find the modest and inadequate cuts made to the bloated stimulus bill unbearable? It certainly gives one pause when considering what legislation might be coming from the House in the future.

Meanwhile, cabinet agencies are starting to examine what roles they’ll play in distributing the massive piles of government money in the bill. The New York Times reports today on the $100 billion the Department of Education will get from the bill. Chester Finn, a former Department of Education official, told the NYT, “It’ll be wonderful fun for a time for [Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s] team — it’ll be like Christmas.” It’s a huge sum, even compared to the $59 billion given to states, school districts, and colleges last year. Former Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings warned, “It’s hard to imagine moving that much money that quickly. The point is, it’s never been done before, and . . . there’s an awesome opportunity for slippage with that much money moving through the meat grinder.”

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